Written by
Robert Frost |
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night bee too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'
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Written by
Gary Fincke |
When magpies die, each of the living swoops down
and pecks, one by one, in an accepted order.
He coaxed my car to start, the boy who’s killed himself.
He twisted a cable, performed CPR on
The carburetor while my three children shivered
Through the unanswerable questions about stalled.
He chose shotgun, full in the face, so no one stepped
Into the cold, blowing on his hands, to fix him.
Let him rest now, the minister says. Let this be,
Repeating himself to four brothers, five sisters,
All of them my neighbors until they grew and left.
Let us pray. Let us manage what we need to say.
Let this house with its three hand-made additions be
Large enough for the one day of necessity.
Let evening empty each room to ceremony
Chosen by the remaining nine. Let the awful,
Forecasted weather hold off in east Ohio
Until each of them, oldest to youngest, has passed.
Let their thirty-seven children scatter into
The squabbling of the everyday, and let them break
This creeping chain of cars into the fanning out
Toward anger and selfishness and the need to eat
At any of the thousand tables they will pass.
Let them wait. Let them correctly choose the right turn
Or the left, this entrance ramp, that exit, the last
Confusing fork before the familiar driveway
Three hundred miles and more from these bleak thunderheads.
Let them regather into the chairs exactly
Matched to their numbers, blessing the bountiful or
The meager with voices that soar toward renewal.
Let them have mercy on themselves. Let my children,
Grown now, be repairing my faults with forgiveness.
© Gary Fincke
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Written by
Sappho |
Without warning
as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart
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Written by
Friedrich von Schiller |
Hark where the bells toll, chiming, dull and steady,
The clock's slow hand hath reached the appointed time.
Well, be it so--prepare, my soul is ready,
Companions of the grave--the rest for crime!
Now take, O world! my last farewell--receiving
My parting kisses--in these tears they dwell!
Sweet are thy poisons while we taste believing,
Now we are quits--heart-poisoner, fare-thee-well!
Farewell, ye suns that once to joy invited,
Changed for the mould beneath the funeral shade;
Farewell, farewell, thou rosy time delighted,
Luring to soft desire the careless maid,
Pale gossamers of gold, farewell, sweet dreaming
Fancies--the children that an Eden bore!
Blossoms that died while dawn itself was gleaming,
Opening in happy sunlight never more.
Swanlike the robe which innocence bestowing,
Decked with the virgin favors, rosy fair,
In the gay time when many a young rose glowing,
Blushed through the loose train of the amber hair.
Woe, woe! as white the robe that decks me now--
The shroud-like robe hell's destined victim wears;
Still shall the fillet bind this burning brow--
That sable braid the Doomsman's hand prepares!
Weep ye, who never fell-for whom, unerring,
The soul's white lilies keep their virgin hue,
Ye who when thoughts so danger-sweet are stirring,
Take the stern strength that Nature gives the few!
Woe, for too human was this fond heart's feeling--
Feeling!--my sin's avenger doomed to be;
Woe--for the false man's arm around me stealing,
Stole the lulled virtue, charmed to sleep, from me.
Ah, he perhaps shall, round another sighing
(Forgot the serpents stinging at my breast),
Gayly, when I in the dumb grave am lying,
Pour the warm wish or speed the wanton jest,
Or play, perchance, with his new maiden's tresses,
Answer the kiss her lip enamored brings,
When the dread block the head he cradled presses,
And high the blood his kiss once fevered springs.
Thee, Francis, Francis, league on league, shall follow
The death-dirge of the Lucy once so dear;
From yonder steeple dismal, dull, and hollow,
Shall knell the warning horror on thy ear.
On thy fresh leman's lips when love is dawning,
And the lisped music glides from that sweet well--
Lo, in that breast a red wound shall be yawning,
And, in the midst of rapture, warn of hell!
Betrayer, what! thy soul relentless closing
To grief--the woman-shame no art can heal--
To that small life beneath my heart reposing!
Man, man, the wild beast for its young can feel!
Proud flew the sails--receding from the land,
I watched them waning from the wistful eye,
Round the gay maids on Seine's voluptuous strand,
Breathes the false incense of his fatal sigh.
And there the babe! there, on the mother's bosom,
Lulled in its sweet and golden rest it lay,
Fresh in life's morning as a rosy blossom,
It smiled, poor harmless one, my tears away.
Deathlike yet lovely, every feature speaking
In such dear calm and beauty to my sadness,
And cradled still the mother's heart, in breaking,
The softening love and the despairing madness.
"Woman, where is my father?" freezing through me,
Lisped the mute innocence with thunder-sound;
"Woman, where is thy husband?"--called unto me,
In every look, word, whisper, busying round!
Alas, for thee, there is no father's kiss;--
He fondleth other children on his knee.
How thou wilt curse our momentary bliss,
When bastard on thy name shall branded be!
Thy mother--oh, a hell her heart concealeth,
Lone-sitting, lone in social nature's all!
Thirsting for that glad fount thy love revealeth,
While still thy look the glad fount turns to gall.
In every infant cry my soul is hearkening,
The haunting happiness forever o'er,
And all the bitterness of death is darkening
The heavenly looks that smiled mine eyes before.
Hell, if my sight those looks a moment misses--
Hell, when my sight upon those looks is turned--
The avenging furies madden in thy kisses,
That slept in his what time my lips they burned.
Out from their graves his oaths spoke back in thunder!
The perjury stalked like murder in the sun--
Forever--God!--sense, reason, soul, sunk under--
The deed was done!
Francis, O Francis! league on league shall chase thee
The shadows hurrying grimly on thy flight--
Still with their icy arms they shall embrace thee,
And mutter thunder in thy dream's delight!
Down from the soft stars, in their tranquil glory,
Shall look thy dead child with a ghastly stare;
That shape shall haunt thee in its cerements gory,
And scourge thee back from heaven--its home is there!
Lifeless--how lifeless!--see, oh see, before me
It lies cold--stiff--O God!--and with that blood
I feel, as swoops the dizzy darkness o'er me
Mine own life mingled--ebbing in the flood--
Hark, at the door they knock--more loud within me--
More awful still--its sound the dread heart gave!
Gladly I welcome the cold arms that win me--
Fire, quench thy tortures in the icy grave!
Francis--a God that pardons dwells in heaven--
Francis, the sinner--yes--she pardons thee--
So let my wrongs unto the earth be given
Flame seize the wood!--it burns--it kindles--see!
There--there his letters cast--behold are ashes--
His vows--the conquering fire consumes them here
His kisses--see--see--all are only ashes--
All, all--the all that once on earth were dear!
Trust not the roses which your youth enjoyeth,
Sisters, to man's faith, changeful as the moon!
Beauty to me brought guilt--its bloom destroyeth
Lo, in the judgment court I curse the boon
Tears in the headsman's gaze--what tears?--'tis spoken!
Quick, bind mine eyes--all soon shall be forgot--
Doomsman--the lily hast thou never broken?
Pale Doomsman--tremble not!
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Written by
Laurie Lee |
On eves of cold, when slow coal fires,
rooted in basements, burn and branch,
brushing with smoke the city air;
When quartered moons pale in the sky,
and neons glow along the dark
like deadly nightshade on a briar;
Above the muffled traffic then
I hear the owl, and at his note
I shudder in my private chair.
For like an auger he has come
to roost among our crumbling walls,
his blooded talons sheathed in fur.
Some secret lure of time it seems
has called him from his country wastes
to hunt a newer wasteland here.
And where the candlabra swung
bright with the dancers’ thousand eyes,
now his black, hooded pupils stare,
And where the silk-shoed lovers ran
with dust of diamonds in their hair,
he opens now his silent wing,
And, like a stroke of doom, drops down,
and swoops across the empty hall,
and plucks a quick mouse off the stair...
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Written by
Robert William Service |
The sky is like an envelope,
One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read--our sentence or reprieve?
I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the ***-end of earth;
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet;
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth;
Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat.
Last! Ah, yes, it's the finish. Have ever you heard a man cry?
(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from the base of the chest.)
That's how I've cried, oh, so often; and now that my tears are dry,
I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest.
Rest! Well, it's restful around me; it's quiet clean to the core.
The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden the hills are clad;
The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door,
And I think it's only the river that keeps me from going mad.
By day it's a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate thing,
With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast;
By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring,
Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest.
It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown.
I've learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well.
I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town,
Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell.
Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit alone
I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care:
(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone;
Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer.)
Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate;
A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison bars;
'Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless I wait,
Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti of stars.
See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night,
The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly, serenely it nears;
A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley of light,
Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with hopes and fears.
I look as one looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by;
I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel.
Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence swoops from the sky.
Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only knows how I feel.
Maybe you've seen me sometimes; maybe you've pitied me then--
The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my cabin door.
Some day you'll look and see not; futile and outcast of men,
I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore.
My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and profitless sum.
Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt.
Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy moistened thumb,
Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever out!
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
the dream of the white bird flying
offers a freedom as tasty as nectar
how our lips purse to the goddess’s pap
at the want of such swoops through the air
to be rid of the drag on our legs
the sloshing through drudgery and mire
the daily entangling with bramble
the hurt of our hair caught in barbs
when there in the bowl of our eye
that milky-white shaft through the sun
pierces old canopies revealing
heights that have never been deemed
then to be up and away forgetting
icarus has been there before us
white heat is the worst of all fires
we’re dust before the dream’s gone cold
there’s no bird doesn’t need its tree
with its leaden roots buried in earth
and the earth needs its water - all
things that fly with their fine-pointed rage
must have cool fruits to come down to
before ecstasy and soaring can yield
the unimaginable answers sustaining
the longings all born are bequeathed
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Written by
Conrad Aiken |
Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane
shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,
ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain
howls at the flues and windows to get in,
the golden rooster claps his golden wings
and from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more,
the golden arrow in the southeast sings
and hears on the roof the Atlantic Ocean roar.
Waves among wires, sea scudding over poles,
down every alley the magnificence of rain,
dead gutters live once more, the deep manholes
hollow in triumph a passage to the main.
Umbrellas, and in the Gardens one old man
hurries away along a dancing path,
listens to music on a watering-can,
observes among the tulips the sudden wrath,
pale willows thrashing to the needled lake,
and dinghies filled with water; while the sky
smashes the lilacs, swoops to shake and break,
till shattered branches shriek and railings cry.
Speak, Hatteras, your language of the sea:
scour with kelp and spindrift the stale street:
that man in terror may learn once more to be
child of that hour when rock and ocean meet.
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Written by
Aeschylus |
AGLEAM -- a gleam -- from Ida's height,
By the Fire-god sent, it came;
From watch to watch it leapt, that light,
As a rider rode the flame!
It shot through the startled sky,
And the torch of that blazing glory
Old Lemnos caught on high,
On its holy promontory,
And sent it on, the jocund sign,
To Athos, Mount of Jove divine.
Wildly the while, it rose from the isle,
So that the might of the journeying Light
Skimmed over the back of the gleaming brine!
Farther and faster speeds it on,
Till the watch that keeps Macistus steep
See it burst like a blazing Sun!
Doth Macistus sleep
On his tower-clad steep?
No! rapid and red doth the wild fire sweep;
It flashes afar on the wayward stream
Of the wild Euripus, the rushing beam!
It rouses the light on Messapion's height,
And they feed its breath with the withered heath.
But it may not stay!
And away -- away --
It bounds in its freshening might.
Silent and soon,
Like a broadened moon,
It passes in sheen, Asopus green,
And bursts on Cithaeron gray!
The warder wakes to the Signal-rays,
And it swoops from the hill with a broader blaze.
On, on the fiery Glory rode;
Thy lonely lake, Gorgopis, glowed!
To Megara's Mount it came;
They feed it again
And it streams amain--
A giant beard of Flame!
The headland cliffs that darkly down
O'er the Saronic waters frown,
Are passed with the Swift One's lurid stride,
And the huge rock glares on the glaring tide.
With mightier march and fiercer power
It gained Arachne's neighboring tower;
Thence on our Argive roof its rest it won,
Of Ida's fire the long-descended Son!
Bright Harbinger of glory and of joy!
So first and last with equal honor crowned,
In solemn feasts the race-torch circles round. --
And these my heralds! -- this my SIGN OF PEACE;
Lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of Greece
Stalk, in stern tumult, through the halls of Troy!
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Written by
Guillaume Apollinaire |
ZONE
In the end you are tired of this ancient world
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning
You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity
Here even the cars look antique
Only religion has stayed new religion
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation
You alone in Europe are not ancient oh Christianity
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X
And shame keeps you whom the windows are watching
From entering a church and going to confession this morning
You read the flyers catalogues posters that shout out
There's the morning's poetry and as for prose there are the newspapers
There are 25 cent tabloids full of crimes
Celebrity items and a thousand different headlines
This morning I saw a pretty street whose name I forget
New and clean it was the sun's herald
Executives workers and beautiful stenos
Cross it four times a day from Monday morning to Saturday evening
In the morning the siren moans three times
An angry bell barks at noon
The inscriptions on the signs and walls
The billboards the notices squawk like parrots
I love the charm of this industrial street
In Paris between the Rue Aumont-Thiéville and the Avenue des Ternes
There's the young street and you're still just a little boy
Your mother dresses you only in blue and white
You're very pious and along with your oldest friend René Dalize
You like nothing better than the rituals of the Church
It is nine o'clock the gas is low and blue you sneak out of the dormitory
You pray all night in the school's chapel
While in eternal adorable amethyst depths
The flaming glory of Christ revolves forever
It's the beautiful lily we all cultivate
It's the torch with red hair the wind can't blow out
It's the pale rosy son of the grieving mother
It's the tree always leafy with prayers
It's the paired gallows of honor and eternity
It's the star with six branches
It's God who dies on Friday and comes back to life on Sunday
It's Christ who climbs to the sky better than any pilot
He holds the world record for altitude
Apple Christ of the eye
Twentieth pupil of the centuries he knows how to do it
And changed into a bird this century like Jesus climbs into the air
Devils in their depths raise their heads to look at him
They say he's copying Simon Magus in Judea
They shout if he's so good at flying let's call him a fugitive
Angels gyre around the handsome gymnast
Icarus Enoch Elijah Apollonius of Tyana
Hover around the first airplane
They scatter sometimes to let the ones carrying the Eucharist pass
Those priests that are forever ascending carrying the host
Finally the plane lands without folding its wings
And the sky is full of millions of swallows
Crows falcons owls come in full flight
Ibises flamingos storks come from Africa
The Roc Bird made famous by storytellers and poets
Soars holding in its claws Adam's skull the first head
The eagle swoops screaming from the horizon
And from America the little hummingbird comes
From China the long agile peehees have come
They have only one wing and fly in pairs
Now here's the dove immaculate spirit
Escorted by the lyre-bird and the spotted peacock
The phoenix that self-engendering pyre
For an instant hides all with its burning ash
Sirens leaving the dangerous straits
Arrive singing beautifully all three
And all eagle phoenix peehees from China
Hang out with the flying Machine
Now you're walking in Paris all alone in the crowd
Herds of buses amble by you mooing
The anguish of love tightens your throat
As if you were never going to be loved again
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery
You are ashamed when you catch yourself saying a prayer
You make fun of yourself and your laughter crackles like the fire of Hell
The sparks of your laughter gild the abyss of your life
It is a painting hung in a dark museum
And sometimes you go look at it close up
Today you're walking in Paris the women have turned blood-red
It was and I wish I didn't remember it was at the waning of beauty
Surrounded by fervent flames Our Lady looked at me in Chartres
The blood of your Sacred Heart drenched me in Montmartre
I am sick from hearing blissful phrases
The love I suffer from is a shameful sickness
And the image that possesses you makes you survive in insomnia and anguish
It is always near you this image that passes
Now you're on the shores of the Mediterranean
Under the lemon trees that are in flower all year long
You go boating with some friends
One is from Nice there's one from Menton and two from La Turbie
We look with dread at the octopus of the deep
And among the seaweed fish are swimming symbols of the Savior
You are in the garden of an inn just outside of Prague
You feel so happy a rose is on the table
And you observe instead of writing your story in prose
The Japanese beetle sleeping in the heart of the rose
Terrified you see yourself drawn in the agates of Saint Vitus
You were sad enough to die the day you saw yourself
You look like Lazarus thrown into a panic by the daylight
The hands on the clock in the Jewish district go counter-clockwise
And you too are going slowly backwards in your life
Climbing up to Hradcany and listening at night
To Czech songs being sung in taverns
Here you are in Marseilles in the middle of watermelons
Here you are in Coblenz at the Giant Hotel
Here you are in Rome sitting under a Japanese medlar tree
Here you are in Amsterdam with a young woman you think is beautiful she is ugly
She is engaged to a student from Leyden
There they rent rooms in Latin Cubicula Locanda
I remember I spent three days there and just as many in Gouda
You are in Paris getting interrogated
They're arresting you like a criminal
You made some miserable and happy journeys
Before you became aware of lies and of age
You suffered from love at twenty and at thirty
I've lived like a madman and I've wasted my time
You don't dare look at your hands anymore and all the time I want to cry
Over you over the women I love over everything that's terrified you
Your tear-filled eyes watch the poor emigrants
They believe in God they pray the women breast-feed the children
They fill the waiting-room at the St. Lazaire station with their smell
They have faith in their star like the Magi
They hope to earn money in Argentina
And go back to their country after making their fortune
One family is carrying a red eiderdown the way you carry your heart
The eiderdown and our dreams are equally unreal
Some of these emigrants stay here and put up at the
Rue des Rosiers or the Rue des Ecouffes in hovels
I've seen them often at night they're out for a breath of air in the street
And like chess pieces they rarely move
They are mostly Jews the wives wearing wigs
Sit still bloodless at the back of store-fronts
You're standing in front of the counter at a sleazy bar
You're having coffee for two sous with the down-and-out
At night you're in a big restaurant
These women aren't mean but they do have their troubles
All of them even the ugliest has made her lover suffer
She is a Jersey policeman's daughter
Her hands that I hadn't seen are hard and chapped
I feel immense pity for the scars on her belly
I humble my mouth now to a poor hooker with a horrible laugh
You are alone morning is approaching
Milkmen clink their cans in the streets
Night withdraws like a half-caste beauty
Ferdine the false or thoughtful Leah
And you drink this alcohol burning like your life
Your life that you drink like an eau-de-vie
You walk towards Auteuil you want to go home on foot
To sleep surrounded by your fetishes from the South Seas and from Guinea
They are Christs in another form and from a different creed
They are lower Christs of dim expectations
Goodbye Goodbye
Sun neck cut
from Alcools, 1913
Translation copyright Charlotte Mandell
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